Fighters
by MeriKanne
Summary: A songfic challenge I put together for myself. Years after the War, Draco and Hermione finally see each other as real people, but what caused his change of heart? And when he realizes he truly fell for her, what sort of secrets will he have to possess in order to keep her? What kind of guilt does it take to fight for the one you love?


**Ah hello everyone. I know it's been a while, but I felt spontaneous and decided to combine two quick prompts.  
The first one I'd like to thank Gaia Online for providing me with in the Writers forum where I received a prompt and phrase to be included.**

** Prompt: Guilt **

**Phrase: "Get out of my sight!"**

**The second is bascially the songfic challenge. Put your iPod (or just listening to the radio) and write to the first 10 songs played. I've got the first half waiting for you below (the first five songs) and Part Deux shall come... Well... You can expect it at some point. School is just starting up again and it feels like I have twice as many classes as I did last year, so we'll see how everything works out. **

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**Disclaimer: I do not own or make money off of Harry Potter nor any of the songs I've used for this fic. Harry Potter belongs to the wonderful J.K. Rowling and the songs all belong to their respective artists. **

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**Teenage Dream by Katy Perry**

** In My Arms by Plumb**

** Dirty Little Secret by The All-American Rejects**

** Shattered (Turn the Car Around) by O.A.R.**

** According to You by Orianthi**

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He took my hand and led us up the winding staircase to our apartment. I giggled as we flew up the steps at one in the morning just like that first night.

"I have a surprise for you," he whispered, almost bursting with glee. Like a kid at Christmas. It's just too bad neither of us had ever had that feeling before.

We burst into the room and I nearly fell off my feet. Down to the last inch, every nook and cranny was magically decorated to replicate that first night. The night we saw each other not as enemies or bigots, but as humans. As humans who, when opened up their hearts and let their defenses melt away in the warm spring air, found and inexplicable draw to each other that had been masked by another strong passion throughout their teenage years. Hate.

But that hate was all but forgotten, no, it did not exist at that masquerade and it never came back when we realized who the other was.

"Look at yourself, love."

I glanced down and found myself in that same red satin dress that my best friend had stuffed me in all those years ago. I couldn't see it then, but now I could see that her taste went farther than fashion. It made me as giddy and as flirtatious as a teenager. Not the teenager I was, but the kind teenager that had attracted his eye back then.

I looked up at my secret boyfriend of two years to see him in his dashing olive green suit. His platinum eyebrow lifted in a "What do you think?" fashion and I jumped into his arms and planted a kiss on his sweet lips in approval.

He pulled me into a fast waltz, spinning me around until he was the only clear thing I could see. My heart stopped in its place when he smiled at me. I flung my head back and let my curls whip around the room as we spun around our enlarged living room.

It was two years after school. Two years after we all went back for our eighth year of Hogwarts. But it wasn't at Hogwarts. The home we had all come to love still took time to rebuild, even with all the magical construction. So our small returning class attended at his home.

His vacated manor.

And two years after that was a charity ball that acclaimed us war heroes and raised funds to help the Aurors remove the last dregs of Voldemort's dark influence and make upgrades to the school.

We reacquainted ourselves in this dance. A dance that ultimately led to the happiest chapter in our lives. Or what I thought was our happiest.

We finally spun our way to the bedroom which was revamped to his old bedroom. The bedroom where we found out who we were, and who we wanted to be. It wasn't until I officially broke off the unofficial relationship with Ron several months later that I realized I loved him. No one else could bring about the sense of adrenaline that coursed through me like a schoolgirl sneaking around, even though we were all adults. No one else could make me remember the good days when the worst part of the day was finishing Harry's essay, or running out of wool for the House Elves hats and scarves. Only he could bring back that inner child that was getting buried under adulthood and responsibility.

Of course, he brought with him an almost saddening seriousness. Something we all garnered after the war when the realization that we lost loved ones had time to sink in without your attention being diverted because of a hex thrown at your back, or another battle with Voldemort himself.

He hoisted me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking my ankles together while I burrowed my face in his neck, breathing in his heady cologne, the same cologne he's worn forever. The same cologne I've loved all this time. He wrapped his fingers in my hair and fell backwards onto the bed.

I kissed my way around his neck and jawline before he tugged at my hair. His fingers had gotten stuck.

Again.

I guess he really wanted to recreate that night from two years ago.

After finally disentangling himself from my wild hair, he rolled over on top of me and grasped at the neckline of the soft dress.

"Remember this?" he growled, his voice covered with lust. He began tugging downwards on the neckline until I heard a rip. "It's a good thing we have magic to fix that. Again."

And once again, he showed me just exactly why he reigned over all magical adolescent girls as the infamous Slytherin Sex God throughout our school years.

It.

Was.

Beautiful.

o.O.o

For the first time when I woke up she wasn't lying next to me. The room had converted back to its old self. The ceiling held up by books and small traces of personal belongings scattered around like the glue that held this place together. Without it, no one would know we had been here. It would be just another empty room with stolen memories from our real lives, the ones the world wanted us to live.

I padded to the kitchenette where I found her sipping on her steaming coffee. Coffee was one muggle food I didn't get. It was bitter, it was expensive, it burned the tongue and occasionally the man parts when said coffee gets spilled accidentally by adorable secret girlfriend, and I found the caffeine to have no effect on me.

Perhaps it was the pureblood. They say muggle technology and apparently coffee's caffeine never work for us because we are so conservative and rooted in ancient traditions. But I was glad to have gotten free of those antique ways with the help of my muggleborn radical. Well, radical to us slow-as-molasses wizards.

"What's up?" I asked.

She glanced over at the dingy window that exposed half the gray brick building next door and then even more gray skies. A shadowy figure passed through the draped windows of the other building.

Her head turned toward me, her big brown eyes in the lead wet with tears. I rushed over to her and knelt on the hard, dirty linoleum pulling her to me.

"What if it's over? They've been looking for you. We both know that. And we can't come out and get protection from the Aurors. I'm afraid this," she waved her arms around at our little hideaway, "this is all going to come crumbling down on us. I'm afraid your parents will disown you, my friends will shun me, and worst of all," she finally looked me in the eye and a fat tear rolled down her cheek. "I'm afraid I'll lose you."

I pulled her into me and let her sob, stroking her tangled hair from last night's events. While the subject of us coming out to the world with our relationship (and not with good results, only bad consequences) and my underground running from escaped Death Eaters (also with only bad consequences) had come up before, she had never been this upset over it. No one knew how much time we had left.

I tucked her head under my chin and we just stayed there until I saw what she saw.

The Dark Mark.

It was hanging ominously in the dark sky a few blocks down. I guess they found me.

I pulled her in tighter and inhaled her scent deeply. Raspberries and chocolate. I don't know why she smelled like that because she really didn't like the fruit and ate chocolate for only "that week" of the month, but I loved it. To my nose, it completely defined her. She smelled more like raspberries when she was in a better mood, and more chocolaty when she's sad. This was definitely a moment of chocolate bliss for my olfactory sense and yet utter devastation for the rest of me.

My heart was already breaking and yet she was still here in my arms where I wanted to keep her forever. Before, I would have given anything to see this girl fall off her high horse and out of everyone's good graces. I would have bet my inheritance just to watch her lose. But now, I would bet on the fact that if my parents ever found out about this I wouldn't have an inheritance anymore that I'd do anything to save her. To protect her from the cruel world that wants to see her fall. From my old malice to the old jealousies her "friends" collected like STD's I wanted to protect her.

It's not that I doubted she was a strong woman. Heck, she was probably the strongest man or woman I've ever known. Much stronger than myself. But that meant she also went through the most. Yes, even more than The Chosen One Potter who had lost his family and role models to the War.

She lost her trust in the people closest to her. She lost her virginity to a rape by a monster. And she lost her memory.

I know I should go out there and do something about the symbol of all I used to stand for, but she keeps me anchored here on this cold floor with my arms wrapped around her.

All I want is to protect her and give her the happiness that's been long overdue.

o.O.o

The firm was going completely berserk over the Dark Mark from yesterday. A multitude of eyes turned toward me as I walked in. Blue, brown, green, wide, scared, and bespectacled eyes traced my path to my office. Unexpected, but unsurprisingly my fellow war heroes awaited my arrival in the cramped space. My boss boasted that I was his best attorney and yet I still retained the old closet recently made office.

The green-eyed boy donning his familiar round glasses spoke first. "I know you've heard it a million times, but do you know anything? You were downtown last night, right?"

For once, The Chosen One was wrong. I had in fact not been asked that a million times, but for how I felt I might have well as answered a million times. As the third part of the Golden Trio, the brains of the war heroes and the compassionate liberator of the house elf enslavement and other magical creature discrimination, people looked up to me. This was supposed to me my dream job. No, my dream career. A job is something one does for money. A career is something one does because they love it; it's something they would do with or without compensation. But it just felt like I was back at Hogwarts with everyone asking me for homework help or advice.

Keeping up appearances with my "boyfriend", keeping secrets with my secret boyfriend, and being responsible for news about the dreaded Dark Mark was splitting me at the seams.

"Harry, I don't know anything. Yes, I saw it briefly but I couldn't get to the source or the castor before it disappeared."

"Oh." He sounded disappointed.

I yearned to tell him more, but then I would just be lying. The pressure threatened me, making a slimy, guilty feeling worm its way inside my gut, even though I really didn't know anything more about it. Of course, I _could_ have gone and investigated, but instead I stayed wrapped in my lover's arms like a coward.

What happened to the headstrong lioness that didn't need a man?

Harry left suddenly, as if he remembered he had a meeting with the minister. He didn't in fact, since the minister of magic was overseas this week, but some other thing of urgent matter.

The youngest male Weasley stood before me looking all the awkward, ginger-haired boy that I fell for all those years ago. His cute, boyish charm was what attracted me to begin with. He was safe and secure; at least until a night shortly after the masquerade where old enemies were reborn into lovers.

He closed the gap between us and pulled me into a suffocating hug. After that night, his security shattered.

We hadn't been officially dating, but the entire wizarding world seemed to view it as so. So when the night of the masquerade came around I didn't see it as cheating. But months later, someway, somehow, he found out.

He.

Raped.

Me.

Maybe because I left so much to see my blond bad boy in secret so much. Not for more trysts, but just to get to know him.

Maybe because I was distracted from him.

Maybe because I didn't kiss him back the way I used to.

I don't know. But the anger and jealousy over my "adultery" completely destroyed any image I had left of his kindness and any old ties of friendship.

I was scared and went to him. He told me I should "officially" leave him if he considered that night "infidelity."

So I did.

He had made no threats after the rape, but I made it public anyway.

Ron begged for forgiveness. He was so convincing that for the weeks after, I received Howlers and death threats for "breaking the heart of my best friend, the war hero."

But they didn't see his eyes.

No matter how much he cried for the Daily Prophet, I could see it in his eyes.

The malice.

The rage.

The evil that craved revenge for his public humiliation and domination of me.

Finally I gave in and began officially dating him. All the while officially dating my Slytherin in secret.

Seeing him in secret became harder, especially with Ron watching me like Moody's magical eye.

Being squeezed against my boyfriend made me convulse in revulsion at the sudden memory. After we got back together, the nasty side of him completely disappeared. He was truly on his knees begging me for forgiveness, the malevolent glint in his eye having left from the public affair even though I knew it promised something ugly in the future.

But now something was off. As I was explaining to Harry, that wicked spark returned and my insides froze.

"I know what you've been up to 'Mione," he whispered in my ear.

I hated that name. It was something that only he called me, something that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. It was something that he called me when we were alone, something he hadn't called me since that terrible night that left my emotions scarred forever. It was something that made my blood freeze around the ice of my internal organs.

I was truly frozen.

"Sneaking around with that snake. Taking your 'vacation' in that run-down flat downtown with him," he accused, his voice spewing poisonous spittle in my ear.

He released me and walked to the door and shut it from prying eyes.

"It's alright, she's just a little overwhelmed from all the work she's got," he said apologetically. Everyone left at his word, at the wronged boyfriend's word and never thought a thing again about it.

I could almost hear him wink at Tracey across the office.

A tear began to slide down my cheek.

"Muffliato."

"But it's okay," he cooed as he pulled at the buttons on my blouse and swept everything off my neatly organized desk. "I'll keep your dirty little secret."

o.O.o

Weeks.

That's what it took before I saw her again.

Walking around on the arm of her real boyfriend, the one that raped her and used his own public humiliation against her. She looked so happy. I was in Diagon Alley, just shopping around but mainly hoping to find her. I didn't expect him.

As they turned the corner, fingers intertwined as ours had been so many nights sleeping in that bug infested bed, I saw it.

A big, sparkly engagement ring.

My heart.

Just.

Shattered.

The breakup with Pansy in school nicked the armor. I did care for her, I really did, but as a friend and her breaking off our relationship for my best mate was that first shear of ice in those tiny invisible cracks in my shield.

Watching her getting tortured by my whack-job of an aunt expanded that ice. Good thing too because it crept in just enough to freeze over my slowly breaking heart, even if at the time I still thought of her as a know-it-all mudblood.

When I found out the amazing girl in the red satin dress was my lifelong enemy, I was fractured. I couldn't believe how someone so wonderful could have been hidden by my own ignorant hate all that time.

Hearing of her rape by her first love and best friend I broke. I vowed I would never do anything like that, hurt her in that most intimate way. I would love her like she deserved, like she had been fooled with all this time.

But now seeing that engagement ring on her finger, _his_ engagement ring, I completely and utterly shattered.

Pain ripped through me and I nearly collapsed. I staggered behind the colorful sign of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and collapsed on the ground.

To not hear from her for so long and then to see her so happy with _him_ and with _his_ engagement ring on her finger…

I couldn't help it. I mumbled a disillusion charm and fled from Diagon Alley. Once past The Leaky Cauldron where hardly a wizard dawdled and Apparated back to our flat.

I stumbled into our room where I had slept for the past month waiting to see if she'd show up. I grabbed the picture of us at that masquerade all those years ago and threw it against the wall where it shattered.

Just like me.

o.O.o

I hated him.

Plain and simple.

Even after the second time I was willing to forgive him because of our long friendship.

But not after this.

He threatened my job. He threatened to expose us.

He threatened to kill him.

What choice did I have? He was Harry's second in command and the brother-in-law to the Minister of Magic through Percy who married Kingsley's younger sister. I had just as much credibility and fame as Harry and Ron, but not near enough political influence. I tended to frantically run away whenever politics crept into the conversation.

So the next day, after leaving me thoroughly ruffled, he came back with roses and another apology. And the day after that, chocolate and apology. He continued his pattern until the end of the week when he brought the ring. The ring that burned my finger, the ring that constricted the digit until I just wanted to chop it off the muggle way. The entire office was in on his proposal. He made quite the spectacle of it. Two-thirds of the Golden Trio was to be married to each other, so naturally everyone knew.

I just hoped that he was as far from everyone as he always was, off in his own league that he didn't know. It killed me that I couldn't see him or explain. Ron never let me out of his sight, or if for a brief moment he did, he sent spies to follow me. Endless nights I laid in Ron's bed, scooted to the brink of the mattress, as far from him as possible, silently crying over losing him this way.

Once, in Diagon Alley, I caught a glimpse of him sulking under the shadows of the quidditch supply store. He looked so beaten, so… so shattered that I nearly had a breakdown from my vantage point behind some lavish robes in Madam Malkin's.

He must have been looking for me. It appeared he had heard the news, fallen from his little piece heaven and joined the rest of us in society and learned of the engagement. But he still hadn't given up.

Ron broke me from the reverie with his loud clucking of the tongue. I sat in a modified version of the Hogwarts uniform, trussed up on his bed. Even though be practically forced me to move in with him after the proposal, this bed will never be mine. Will never be ours. Only his.

The white oxford was crisply starched, but three sizes too small, which forced the top buttons to pop open, the rest straining to hold onto their other half. The plaid skirt in our House colors. Again, too small, but only in length. Sitting with my feet tucked neatly under me it barely skirted the bed behind me.

My mouth was gagged and my wrists fastened tightly behind my back.

This same position, this same outfit he put me in each night after our typical in-love fiancé act was over for the day. And acted I did. I had to. If I wasn't completely convincing, he would be gone with a snap of those thick fingers.

"Guess who I saw today in Diagon Alley?" he asked in a syrupy voice, thick with poison.

Usually he taunted me. Taunted me about the different ways he could have him killed. The myriad of cover stories for the Death Eater-turned-good-but-still-not-completely-trusted's death.

I don't know how my best friend had turned from a kind, caring soul to not having one at all. It ripped my heart out to see what he had become but that heart burned to ashes when I saw his broken figure in Diagon Alley.

"Well, no need to say anything. I can see it in your eyes." He smirked. It wasn't anything like his. Ron's was the perfect sum of arrogance, evil, and a small portion of the kid I grew up with which made it all the more revolting.

"Yes, I saw him. He was weak, 'Mione. Skin and bones, babe. Skin. And. Bones." He smirked at me. His cold finger hooked itself under my jaw and tilted my head back. "I don't know what you see in him. He's a Death Eater. A Death Eater 'Mione! Only the lowest of the low would associate with those scum now. Voldemort's days are over. He's a weak coward, milking all he can out of Narcissa's deed and that one moment of sympathy, although I have to give you credit on that hex. Harry was uglier than a goblin with spattergroit."

He walked around the bed and I felt the mattress compress behind me. His fingers twirled around in my hair, smooth as a professional.

"But I guess you're the perfect match for that dirt. You've got the blood to match the personality of him, did you know that? Of course, he spent all our childhood making that clear. 'Mudblood' he'd call you. And I defended you because you were my friend. But I guess if you were just going to turn your back on your real friends to exchange DNA with that bastard then he was right all along."

He knotted his fist in my hair and yanked my head back until I looked in his eyes.

Those eyes that gleamed with something darker, something primal that dominated the Ron I knew. That dominated me.

And yet it still hurt.

Whether this new, malicious side of Ron was here to stay or brought on temporarily by some sort of twisted jealousy, these words still hurt from him. I decided I can't forgive him, but that doesn't mean it doesn't wound.

"You're only book-smart 'Mione dear. You can memorize the facts and regurgitate them back up like a mother bird but you can be _so_ stupid. Stupid!" He let go of my hair and my head snapped back in place. "We tried, we really did to save you from that monster."

Was he joking? Just because they wanted so badly to accuse him of being a Death Eater back in Sixth Year they were saving me? To label him forever, ruining his life whether he was or wasn't a Death Eater, was saving me? I hadn't even fallen for him then. I stood up for his innocence, the good in a bully, but I hadn't needed saving then and the only saving I needed now was from Ron.

"Bloody hell 'Mione, he's a _Death Eater_! I know what you're thinking. You think that you hadn't fallen for him then, but you had. Harry couldn't tell, but I could. Do you know why? Because _I_ loved you. I still love you. Don't you see? He's just a womanizer. He never cared for you. But you had to be your difficult, headstrong self and go to him. Wasn't I good enough for you? Your best friend? The one who really knew you?"

I wanted to scream so badly. But I knew that's exactly what he wanted. If Ron really loved me, he wouldn't have done this. If he really knew me, he wouldn't make my decisions for me. If he really cared, just had one single finely shred bit of care left for me, he would realize what this did to me as a person.

But he didn't.

All I could do was close my eyes and wait out the storm.

His beautifully pale face filled my closed eyelids. The rakish bangs that skimmed his eyes shone platinum. Those eyes not only were the color of a thunderstorm but swirled around like one too in his rage at Ron softened just for me. The curl of his lip, the slight dimple of his cheek curled into an endless fury at Ron.

I tried, oh I tried fighting him. Logic all but eluded him, and although I was the unquestionably better wizard, every route I could have taken he would have stamped out with the ease of someone in power. Someone who liked their power.

But that part of me, that part of me that landed me in Gryffindor instead of Ravenclaw, that _drive_ to keep going, to keep fighting, never left. But I knew fighting would make it worse. It just brought out that severe overreaction from Ron. Common sense evaded him and forced out a predator. I knew this and yet I just. Kept. Pushing.

I can only blame myself for this because ultimately I knew better. But I still chose to fight. Now, that drive exhibits itself as him. He's my fighter, my manifestation of my emotions into one lone figurine of hope, and the one I truly love.

That pianist's hand stroking my cheek.

The sweetly whispered nothings in my ear.

The personally flown in Belgian chocolate truffles because they are my favorites.

The soul that thought my flaws made me flawless and that made my heart sing.

It killed me even more than Ron did, hearing about him. That he had given up hope after seeing the ring.

His shining eyes darkened and looked away. The hair fell in his eyes and this time he didn't bother sweeping them back out. He let go and turned away. And with him walked away my courage.


End file.
